After months of breathless anticipation — and a race to the
bottom of the standings by several teams — the New Orleans
Pelicans shocked everyone by winning the N.B.A. draft lottery
on Tuesday night, giving them the No. 1 pick in a draft that
will include one of the most acclaimed prospects in league
history: Duke’s Zion Williamson.

For the Pelicans to win the lottery, the three teams with the
worst records this season — the Knicks (17-65), the Cleveland
Cavaliers (19-63) and the Phoenix Suns (19-63) — had to lose
again. They each came into the night with a 14 percent chance
of getting the top pick in a revamped system designed to
reduce the value of finishing at the very bottom. The Knicks
ended up with the No. 3 pick, the Cavaliers with No. 5 and
the Suns with No. 6.

New Orleans was tied for the seventh-best chance of getting
the first pick — at just 6 percent — after finishing the
season with a 33-49 record. Though not among the teams that
appeared to tank for draft position, the Pelicans had trouble
focusing all season because of drama surrounding a trade
demand from their signature star, Anthony Davis. The question
of what to do now about Davis — and possibly the rights to
Williamson — will undoubtedly captivate the league in the
lead-up to the draft at Barclays Center in Brooklyn on June
20.

Regardless of whether New Orleans stays at No. 1 or trades
the pick, the top choice in the draft will almost assuredly
be used on the 18-year-old Williamson, a player who has
received as much attention as any amateur since LeBron James
went straight to the N.B.A. from high school in 2003.

In an age in which 3-point-shooting skills seem to be valued
above all else, Williamson is a throwback to a more
rough-and-tumble era of the N.B.A. He stands 6 feet 7 inches
and tips the scales at 280 pounds of sculpted muscle. He does
much of his damage in the paint, using his power and his
leaping ability to set up countless highlight-reel dunks.

Williamson acknowledged the overwhelming hype while doing his
best to appear humble ahead of Tuesday’s lottery.

“The biggest challenge is just trying to live up to
everyone’s expectations,” he said in an interview televised
before the lottery.

[The legend of Zion
Williamson?]

The night could not have played out better for David Griffin,
who was named the executive vice president of basketball
operations for the Pelicans in April.

Griffin’s previous team, the Cavaliers, got the No. 1 pick in
the lottery three times during his tenure, and now the
Pelicans, who have never advanced beyond the second round of
the playoffs, have the top spot for the second time in their
history. The first time was in 2012, when, while still using
the nickname Hornets, they selected Davis.

As the audience waited for Mark Tatum, the N.B.A.’s deputy
commissioner, to announce the top four picks, Griffin stood
onstage at the Hilton Chicago with the representatives of the
three other teams that had yet to learn their fate. To his
right loomed Patrick Ewing, the Hall of Fame Knicks center
who was representing his former team, and to his left was
Elliot Perry, a part-owner of the Memphis Grizzlies.

After the No. 3 pick went to the Knicks, Griffin leaned into
Perry to brace for the announcement of the runner-up. He
celebrated as soon as the Grizzlies were named as the
recipients of the No. 2 pick.

“I think it’s just another positive event for us in what’s
going to be — we hope — several that we stack together,”
Griffin said immediately after the lottery.

However enviable the Pelicans’ circumstances seemed in that
moment, the team must resolve the complications of having a
disgruntled superstar and the opportunity to pick Williamson,
who plays power forward, the same position as Davis. Griffin
has said since his hiring that he did not consider trading
Davis a foregone conclusion and that he believes the addition
of a player like Williamson could increase the odds that
Davis chooses to stay.

“I think if you look at the totality of where this
organization is and where we’re going, we feel very strongly
that we’re going be the environment he wants to be part of,”
Griffin said. “And if we’re not, that’s fine. We can deal
with it from there.”

Whoever ends up with Williamson — be it the Pelicans or
another team via trade — will get a terrific player on both
ends of the court who became just the third freshman to win
the Naismith Award, which recognizes the nation’s top college
player. He averaged 22.6 points and 8.9 rebounds a game for
the Blue Devils on their path to a round-of-8 appearance,
with many feeling that the air drained out of the N.C.A.A.
tournament when Duke was upset by Michigan State.

Until that loss, the only thing that had slowed Williamson’s
progress was a knee injury
in the opening minute of a game against North Carolina in
February. That moment, in which a shoe could not withstand
the force of moving the giant player from side to side,
seemed to bolster the Paul Bunyan-like hyperbole applied to
Williamson, apparently without creating lasting physical
problems for him.

The overall lottery played out like this (with the picks from
15 to 30 coming in reverse order of the 2018-19 standings):

1. New Orleans Pelicans

2. Memphis Grizzlies

3. Knicks

4. Los Angeles Lakers

5. Cleveland Cavaliers

6. Phoenix Suns

7. Chicago Bulls

8. Atlanta Hawks (via Dallas)

9. Washington Wizards

10. Atlanta Hawks

11. Minnesota Timberwolves

12. Charlotte Hornets

13. Miami Heat

14. Boston Celtics (via Sacramento)

In what should be viewed as a positive development by the
league office, the fates of the Knicks, the Cavaliers and the
Suns lent credibility to the new lottery system, which ended
up flattening out the benefits of a bad record. This was the
first draft under the new system, which team owners approved
in 2017. In addition to lowering the worst team’s chance of
getting the top pick to 14 percent from 25 percent, it gave
every franchise aside from the three with the most losses a
better shot at finishing high in the lottery.

Ewing, who came to the Knicks as the No. 1 pick in 1985, the
first year of the draft lottery, was unable to provide
similar magic for a team that seemed to be pursuing the top
pick so diligently that .

Instead it was Griffin’s Pelicans that came away with the
biggest draft prize in 16 years.

“This just jump-starts the process,” Griffin said while
trying to play down his excitement. “It’ll be harder for me
to mess it up than it would have been before this.”

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